Did Obama tell a Democratic audience that a “fully automatic weapon” was used at Newtown?

AllahpunditPosted at 2:01 pm on April 4, 2013

Either (a) O’s referring to a different shooting, which I doubt, (b) I missed a major update to the Newtown story, (c) he knows something we don’t, or (d) he has roughly the same mastery of gun fundamentals as magazine expert Diana DeGette. From last night’s DCCC fundraiser in San Francisco:

Now, over the next couple of months, we’ve got a couple of issues: gun control. (Applause.) I just came from Denver, where the issue of gun violence is something that has haunted families for way too long, and it is possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters and sportsmen, but also make sure that we don’t have another 20 children in a classroom gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon — by a fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly.

Adam Lanza had an honest-to-goodness machine gun on him, not a Bushmaster semiautomatic? That’s … an important detail, but I haven’t heard it mentioned once in the news coverage I’ve seen about Sandy Hook. (Then again, it’s not unusual for the media to overlook certain facts on this topic.) According to every report I’ve seen, including the Hartford Courant’s story just this morning about Connecticut’s new gun law, Lanza carried an AR-15. If O thinks a fully automatic rifle was used — which would explain his recent refrain about “weapons of war” — why is he targeting semiautomatics? And why isn’t Piers Morgan talking about this every night as proof of how easy it is for nuts to get hold of guns that even most soldiers aren’t allowed to carry anymore?

That wasn’t the only bon mot last night. The Standard noticed this one from the same fundraiser:

Look, my intention here is to try to get as much done with the Republican Party over the next two years as I can, because we can’t have perpetual campaigns. And so I mean what I say. I am looking to find areas of common ground with Republicans every single day. I want to make sure that we’re working together to stabilize our finances. And I think actually that we can come up with a fiscal deal that instead of lurching from crisis to crisis every three months, we lay the groundwork for long-term growth — controlling our deficits, controlling our debt, but also making sure we can invest in our future. I want to get an immigration deal done. I want to find some common-sense gun safety legislation that we can get done. And I do believe that there are well-meaning Republicans out there who care about their kids just as passionately as we do.

Not all Republicans, mind you. Probably not even most. But the ones willing to vote for Obama’s agenda? Yeah, we can probably give them the benefit of the doubt on whether they love their kids as much as liberals. There’s no hard proof that they’re out there — it’s a matter of “belief” — but he’s staying optimistic. You can always count on O to be a bit more candid about his contempt for his opponents when he’s talking to a group of rich liberals.

Via Mediaite, here he is in Denver yesterday sneering at the idea that the U.S. government, which includes plenty of liberals like Jan Schakowsky and will eventually include plenty more if the Emerging Democratic Majority theory is correct, would ever conceive of taking people’s guns away.